Alfonso V of Leon

Alfonso V de León, called the Noble or he of the Good Fueros (c. 994-Viseo, August 7, 1028), was king of León from 999 until his death. He is the son of Bermudo II and Elvira García.

At the age of five, he succeeded his father under the tutelage of his mother and Count Menendo González, who raised him in Galicia and was his "vicar and nurturing tutor." In 1008, he came of age and inherited an unstable kingdom. Her mother maintained good relations with Castile until a rebellion and enmity with Count Sancho broke the concord and led to her queen mother's retreat to Oviedo, where she died that same year. Alfonso strengthened Leonese rule and seized western lands from Castile in 1017 after Sancho's death. He sought to reorganize the administration and create a new legal framework through the Fuero de León, a set of precepts decreed in 1017 at a meeting of the royal curia.

During his twenty years of reign, Alfonso dedicated himself to rebuilding and reorganizing the kingdom damaged by the campaigns of Almanzor and his son, and rebuilt the city of León. However, his death triggered a new period of turbulence driven by the neighboring kingdom of Navarra.

Alfonso V died from an arrow in 1028, succeeded by his son Bermudo III, aged eleven, under the tutelage of his mother Urraca.

Reign

He succeeded his father Bermudo II at the age of five, being under the guardianship of his mother Elvira García - sister of the Count of Castile Sancho García - and his tutor, Count Menendo González, son of Gonzalo Menéndez, who was in charge of his upbringing in Galicia, as King Alfonso would remember years later when he referred to him as "Menendo, Duke of Galicia, who was my vicar and my foster tutor." Most of the documents Alfonso during the first years of his reign granted them while he was in Galicia. One of the sons of his tutor, Ramiro Menéndez, was his armiger regis.

Alfonso V came of age in 1008, at the age of fourteen, inheriting a kingdom full of political instability. That same year, Menendo Rodríguez and Almanzor's son, Abd al-Málik al-Muzáffar, died. His mother Elvira García, until then regent, guaranteed good relations with Castile for a few more years. The rebellion of a Banu Gómez, supported by Count Sancho, ended this harmony in 1014. The enmity of the king and the count made his courts become a refuge for disaffected opponents. The break with Sancho, who died on March 14, 1017, motivated the queen mother, Elvira, to retire to Oviedo, where she died that same year. He The king reinforced the Leonese dominion of the Castilian county and took away its westernmost lands, between the Cea and Pisuerga rivers (approximately, the modern province of Palencia) in 1017, when Count Sancho died. The late count had taken possession of them. during Alfonso's minority.

Alfonso V wanted to change the administration and for that he first needed a new legal framework. Thus, in 1017, at a meeting of the royal curia, the Fuero de León was promulgated, which has been described as the legal sanction of Leonese feudalism. The aim was to put an end to the disorders of the previous stage and recover royal power. A set of precepts decreed by the King of León Alfonso V in a concilium met in the cathedral of León in the year 1017 are called "Fuero de León". These twenty precepts were added another twenty-eight that regulated local life in the city of León. The twenty years of Alfonso's reign were essentially dedicated to reorganizing and rebuilding the kingdom, greatly damaged by the campaigns of Almanzor and his son at the end of the century X and early XI. It seems that he managed to temporarily restore order to the kingdom, but his His death triggered a new period of turbulence, fueled this time by the neighboring kingdom of Navarra.

Alfonso rebuilt the city of León that had been damaged by Almanzor's attacks.

He died while besieging the Viseo square, in Portugal, on August 7, 1028, from an arrow wound. He was succeeded by his son Bermudo III, still a minor as he was eleven years old, who was protected by his stepmother, Queen Magpie.

Burial

His body was taken to the city of León and buried in the pantheon of kings of San Isidoro de León, in the company of his parents. The stone tomb in which the king's body was deposited is preserved today and on its cover the following Latin inscription appears sculpted:

H. IACET ADEFONSUS QUI POPVLATIT LEGIONEM...ET DEDIT BONOS FOROS ET FECIT/ECCLESIAM HANC LVTO ET LATERE. HABVIT PRAELIA CUM/SARRACENIS, ET INTERFECTUS,EST SAGITTA APUD VISEUM/PORTUGAL FUIT FILIUS VEREMUNDI ORDONII/OBIIT ERA M SEXAGESIMA QUINTA III NAS M.

Marriages and offspring

He married for the first time in the year 1013 with Elvira Menéndez, daughter of his tutor Count Menendo and his wife Muniadona, granddaughter on the paternal side of Count Gonzalo Menéndez "dux magnus of Portugal" and the countess Ilduara Peláez. Two children were born from this marriage:

• Bermudo III de León (1017-1037), king of Leon from 1028 to 1037.
• Sancha de León (1016-1067), wife of King Fernando I de León, the last count of Castile, son of Sancho Garcés III of Pamplona.

Elvira died on December 2, 1022. The following year Alfonso contracted a second marriage, between May and before November 13, 1023, with Urraca Garcés, daughter of King García Sánchez II of Pamplona, and sister of King Sancho the Greater, despite the ties of consanguinity since both were descendants of Count Fernán González. From this second marriage was born:

• Jimena Alfonso. According to some authors he married Count Fernando Gundemáriz, son of Gundemaro Pinióliz on the basis of a donation he made with his mother that was confirmed by Xemena Adefonsi regis filia and that this marriage, that of Fernando and the Infanta Jimena, were the parents of a daughter, possibly called Cristina, who was the mother of Jimena Díaz, the wife of Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar. However, it is in a Portuguese diploma dated in 1045 that Fernando Gundemáriz's wife was Muniadona Ordóñez, daughter of Ordoño Ramírez—bisnieto del conde Gonzalo Menéndez— and his wife Elvira.